Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sulperman]

And it is weird. After 3 years in a hagwon (which I fully enjoyed, but got very bored of) I just started at the public schools. Wondering if anybody else out there is in my boat, and what your opinions are.

Perhaps it is too early to make any kind of judgment, especially since I haven't taught a single class yet, but so far here are my thoughts- please add yours if you're doing this too!

Public School Pros:
#1- Kids in the hallway bow! They bow!!!! I'm sure once classes start, it won't be all respect and love, but for now, they bow!!!
#2- Interesting Korean co-workers. They have a lot of experience, and many do interesting job-related stuff in their fields outside of work
#3- Kids are genuinely interested in interacting in the hall and office. I feel like I am the most interesting person on earth (though past experience has taught me that I am not)
#4 My own desk and computer. Has really come in handy during this week of doing nothing.

Cons:
#1 Not sure what to make of the co-teachers- a couple seem like they are too nervous to talk (my hagwon coworkers were much more confident as a whole) and others kind of seem like they don't want me there. Could be my imagination, but I am not very imaginative, so.....
#2 I'm the first foreign teacher at my school, and they seem like they really want to stick to the books, and not let me leave ever during those test weeks. I know its the same for many others, but I was hoping....
#3 I'm the first foreign teacher, and they think I speak perfect Korean, but I don't, so it has led to many disappointed conversations. What do they expect? I am better than 94% of foreigners here, but still not that good.
#4 No input at all from other teachers. In fact, they already had me teach a workshop to them on how to teach, despite the fact that I have never taught a class of 40 kids before, and they've been doing it for years.

Overall, I am too new to have anything real to say about the situation, but those are my first impressions. What are yours?

[sulperman]

And I forgot the best pro!
#5 It is 9:30 and I have been home for hours! I had dinner and explored my new neighborhood, and still have a lot of time to relax and read or watch tv.

Which leads me to con #5
#5 I have to wake up at 6:30 in the morning tomorrow!!!!! 6:30 in the god damn morning!!!

[Tigerstyleone]

Interesting. Let us know how it goes. I suspect once the kids get used to you you may not be so popular. Were you doing a workshop for the teachers or was it actually the other way around so they can change your teaching style?

[Totti]

I'm teaching at a high school after teaching in a Hagwon last year. Been at my Public School a month.

Pro's

More respect from the students
students police themselves if someone isn't listening
Co-teachers have excellent English
Not feeling burnt out at the end of the day
Having freedom to teach my own lessons
The potential to earn more then at a hagwon with less teaching hours.

Con's

Class size- up to 50 in a class, makes it difficult to truely teach
School lunches and the conversation that follows ' Korean food is spicy' 'Do you like Kimchi'?

[Totti]

Yeah I'll second the early starts. It's going to bed early what I find difficult.

[sulperman]

Tigerstyleone- I have no illusions about that- I am sure that things wont be quite so rosy after classes start. Maybe I'll get a nice beating stick like all the other teachers have to keep em in line (jk, never, ever, would I do that)

Totti- So far, I have been enjoying the lunches, but I could see the conversation topics petering out pretty soon. But it is amazing how eating some fried pork and kimchi makes you a hero in some peoples' eyes.

[iggyb]

The no input from the other teachers might be a big deal for first time teachers, but probably for most veterans, it is a blessing - where ever you teach. It is nice when you have people with experience who can give advice when you want it, but its a pain when you don't want the advice but have to follow what they say and/or are having 3 or 4 people frequently telling you how to do it and contradicting each other.

That is one reason I liked ESL in an American high school over English Language Arts - the people in the department had little idea what I was doing in the class and didn't need to coordinate things with me and I didn't have to keep up with them through pacing guides and whatever.

So when I wanted to do stuff like create a class blog, which they poo-pooed because they were not terribly tech savvy and looked at it like kids were getting away with stuff --- because when they used technology in the class they had to keep the kids off myspace and youtube and the like --- I could shrug my shoulders and set one up anyway by working around the school's Internet filter (which wouldn't even let you do a search with the term "blog" in it) by opening our own class domain.

[sulperman]

Iggyb, you reminded me of my biggest question about this whole thing..... I have seen many people on here say they have free reign over their classes. I was given some books to teach a few pages from, but they told me to really do whatever I want beyond that. I am a very experienced teacher, but I have always had the material spoon-fed to me. It is difficult for me to think of what these kids should be learning that they aren't already.
I guess it will become clearer over the next few weeks, and it will become easy to see what they need to know but aren't learning from the book, at least in my opinion. But for right now I feel like I am at a bit of a loss, not knowing the general level of the classes and all.
But like I said, I guess it will all become clearer as time goes on. Lord knows I am not going to spend the next month teaching the kids flower names like in the Middle School English 3 book I got. Guess I gotta wait and see.....
Thanks all for the input!

[iggyb]

The Internet is so full of TESOL stuff these days with all kinds of sites. A lot of working TESOL people put their lessons and ideas up on the web - stuff that has proven to work for them.

And then there are the books via Google Books.

Then with a computer and projector in your room, you can mine things like YouTube.

If you have a decent imagination, and don't mind doing prep work, there is just so much available. (And if you don't like prep work, you can still mine it because you can find ready-made lesson plans to fit whatever grammar point or language area you want to work on).

Having 30-40 students though is tough. Especially if their levels have big gaps. I've been trying to picture how that would work, but I can't see it without having experienced it...

Well - then again -- I did. I just remembered the first hakwon I worked in sometimes farmed me out to a factory where one class I taught was the lower level white collar workers and there were probably 50 or more of them....

...and looking back, I pretty much failed at that. Nobody complained, but it was mostly them listening to me talk or engage with a few of the students who were eager to practice what they knew.

[D.D.]

Knowing what to teach them is easy. They can't make their own sentences in their head or on paper. So have them practice on paper and then put thet into speaking. I show a short clip and then they practice making 5 original sentences about the clip. Then they speak those sentences. They also need lots of listening practice.

Real basic kids get them to make mind maps with all the words they can think of about a video clip. Next step is to describe the words. ie. yellow dog , fast man..... then they start to make sentences that are 7 words or more with the word "and" to increase the length of the sentence.

[andrewchon]

D.D.:
I am doing that too. I added steps of have them 'imagine' a success, practice saying in 'head' then say it. Not sure whether they have the 'inner ear' to hear themselves though.

[cruisemonkey]

[yingwenlaoshi]

[typo]

They won't stop bowing. At least, they better not. They should also be bringig you candy. My high school girls don't let a week go by twhere I don't get at least a piece of candy.

[Epicurus]

don't know about celebrity/superstar but I remain quite popular I think.

obviously it's at the beginning stages where they are most curious about the new NT and when the celebrity status is at its highest.

that'll fade a bit with time. It also tends to be highest with (I work in a HS) with first graders, then goes down a bit as they get older and more jaded and when it wouldn't look as "cool" to overly like the waygook teacher.

re candy though.

I have very few girls, but I'm the one who's incessantly being pleaded with, cajoled, begged for candy (for them!)